


Faint Like A Heartbeat

by flawedamythyst



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-06
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to The Great Game. <i>But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.</i> - Erma Bombeck</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faint Like A Heartbeat

Sherlock was moving even before the bullet hit the bomb, calculating blast radii and the speed with which a crouching man could rise and cross the six metre distance to the doors. He didn't have enough data - _depends on the precise combination of ingredients in the explosive, the quantity in the jacket, the angle that the bullet enters at_ \- to be able to pinpoint the precise likelihood of either him or John surviving, but he knew enough to know that their chances were extremely slim.

 _John nodded at me,_ he told himself fiercely. _He agreed._ He couldn't have done anything else, and John had known that and consented. Their deaths had been mutually decided on.

His hand was on John's sleeve, already pulling him up, when his brain registered that the explosion hadn't occurred yet. Even if Moriarty had been the type to bluff with a fake bomb, which he wasn't, he was already scrambling towards the exit behind him in a manner that clearly indicated fear for his life, so there had to be an explosion imminent despite the delay.

There was a faint chime from the depths of the jacket as John rose to his feet.

 _The pips,_ thought Sherlock, everything outside his mind moving as if in slow motion while his brain whirled ahead. _Five pips, approximately 1.25 seconds apart, gives us 6.25 seconds until the bomb explodes._ The probability of their survival tripled with that information and suddenly they had enough of a chance to warrant a surge of hope.

John was right beside Sherlock as they ran for the door, keeping up despite his shorter legs with all the tenacity of a man who had seen and survived explosions before. They made it to the doors and Sherlock slammed through them as the last pip sounded, out into the corridor where they'd be at least shielded by the walls from the initial blast.

The bomb exploded behind them with a deafening detonation that threw them both violently forwards. For a wild moment there was nothing but noise and pain, but it only took Sherlock a moment to regain himself from the shock of it. _Smaller bomb than the last ones,_ he thought as he struggled to his feet. He grabbed at John who was still lying on the ground, and shaking his head dazedly, in order to urge him up and onward. Obviously Moriarty had factored for Sherlock triggering the bomb, and given himself a better chance of escaping by reducing the amount of explosive and including the 6.25 seconds of delay.

The explosion had temporarily impaired Sherlock's hearing, replacing everything with a deadened ringing, but he shouted at John anyway, unable to even hear his own voice.

“Come on!”

Surviving the explosion was only the first hurdle – the building had not been built to withstand a bomb of any size and the jacket had been next to a load-bearing wall. The probability of this part of the building collapsing was increasing with every moment that passed.

Ceiling tiles and shattered chunks of concrete were still falling as Sherlock pulled John forcefully to his feet. Logically he should have left him, just concentrated on getting himself out and trusted that John would follow as he always did, but for a reason that he didn't have any brain power left to work out, he couldn't make his feet move without being sure that John was with him.

John faltered for a few steps as Sherlock dragged him along, then shook off his arm and picked his pace up just as Sherlock was beginning to despair of them getting out in time. He felt an immense sense of relief and pride in John's ability to cope in an emergency that seemed out of proportion with the circumstances, but which he put down to the adrenalin.

Just as they made it out of the corridor into the lobby, the wall behind them collapsed with a staggering crash that Sherlock heard even with his impaired hearing. He ducked automatically and glanced back at the falling rubble, trying to work out if the lobby ceiling would come down on them before they could make it outside. The corridor was still caving in, the avalanche of building materials heading towards them as the whole wing started to collapse in on itself.

John grabbed his arm and shouted something that Sherlock couldn't hear, but was probably some version of 'we have to get out of here.' He nodded, and together they ran out into the lobby. The main doors had been locked, but the initial blast had shattered the glass in them and it was an easy task to climb through the empty frames. John fell slightly behind again and Sherlock pulled at his arm. They had to get further away, out of the danger zone for falling debris in case the rest of the building caved in.

They staggered together out across the forecourt, then collapsed under a stunted sapling that had been planted at the edge of the pavement. Sherlock allowed himself a deep breath. Moriarty had got away, without a doubt, and he needed to go after him, but he could afford a couple of minutes first, time to evaluate the effects of the explosion and get his body back under his control, pushing aside his injuries. They all counted as minor enough to be ignored and overcome, which was a relief. There was no way he'd be able to track Moriarty down from a hospital bed.

“Sherlock!” said John's voice dimly in his ear and Sherlock blinked at him. His hearing was beginning to return, excellent.

“Sherlock,” said John again, his mouth shaping the word almost exaggeratedly. His lips looked very pale against his dirt-streaked face. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Sherlock lip-read that more than heard it, but he would have known the content of what John was saying just by the look on his face.

 _His doctor's face_ , he thought as he nodded. A quick diagnostic revealed nothing more worrying than cuts and bruises, as expected. A piece of debris had struck the back of his shoulder in the initial blast, but it barely warranted a second thought. No doubt the numbness would dissipate in a few hours, and he would be left with a rather impressive bruise.

“Thank God,” said John's mouth, still largely without sound, and he shut his eyes for a long moment, then slumped sideways onto the ground, as if all the force that had been keeping him upright had suddenly left him. “You're going to need to call an ambulance.”

Sherlock frowned. “I'm fine,” he said loudly, the words echoing oddly in his head and sounding distant and faded in his ears.

“I'm not,” said John with a self-deprecating smile, and Sherlock became aware of several things all at once. John's face was paler than just shock would have left it, his breathing was coming fast and ragged, and he was clutching ineffectually at the back of his thigh, a dark stain spreading out from under his hands.

For a moment it felt as if another bomb had gone off, all the air knocked out of Sherlock's lungs, and he knelt up by John's side. “What?” he asked, barely able to hear himself over the strange rushing in his ears that had just kicked in – a delayed reaction to the explosion, probably. “What happened?”

“Something hit the back of my leg,” said John through gritted teeth. His face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat and his grip on his leg - _trying to hold his blood in_ thought Sherlock numbly – was faltering. “Ambulance, Sherlock.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Sherlock, fumbling for his phone and hoping harder than he had ever bothered hoping for anything before that it hadn't been damaged.

He couldn't hear the person on the other end of the line at all with his ears still ringing, but he didn't care to wait for the usual greeting to be run through either, not while John's eyes were locked on his face as if he was the only thing keeping him conscious and his blood was spreading out darkly on the tarmac. “Ambulance needed immediately,” he said briskly. “There's been an explosion. My friend's been injured, badly, I need help right now.” He rattled off the address, then cast the phone aside without hanging up.

“What can I do?” he asked John, his mind for once failing him. He knew that he'd known once what to do in the case of massive haemorrhaging, but in the face of seeing John like this – calm, dependable, _reliable_ John, who always tried to help and complained so rarely about all the parts of him that everyone else deemed unacceptable – seemed to have wiped all the knowledge away.

“Apply pressure,” grunted John. Sherlock nodded frantically and put his hands over John's, helping to hold in his blood. The whole of his thigh was slick with it, soaked into his jeans and dripping down over their hands. Sherlock could feel the wound, some massive shard of wood piercing the back of John's leg. _From the door,_ he thought, his mind replaying the explosion and showing the doors to the swimming pool shattering behind them, fragments spraying out with all the force and speed of shrapnel.

“Good,” gasped John. “Excellent.” His own grip loosened, falling away, and Sherlock could see his eyes starting to roll back.

“Stay with me, John,” he ordered, but it seemed that John was just as deaf as he was, because he ignored him entirely.

“Sorry,” he said, absurdly, then collapsed into unconsciousness.

The next handful of minutes were the longest of Sherlock's life. He scrambled to do everything he could to keep John alive, tearing off his jacket to improvise a tourniquet, holding on to his leg as if he could keep the blood from flowing by sheer willpower, but for once there was nothing he could do, no sudden inspiration or mad, genius plan that could save John's life. All he could do was watch the colour drain from John's face and the blood pool around them, staining everything red, and hope that the ambulance arrived before it was too late.

 _I will burn the heart out of you,_ he remembered. Something in his chest felt like Moriarty had already started.

The paramedics arrived and pushed Sherlock to one side, surrounding John like a pack of wild dogs. The police were only seconds behind, but Sherlock didn't spare them a thought, didn't even look at them as they demanded to know what had happened. It was only when John had been packed into the ambulance and the doors shut firmly behind him that he tore his eyes away, looking around for a familiar face, and found Lestrade beside him.

“I need to go to the hospital,” he said. Lestrade just nodded.

 

****

 

John's hospital room was just as nauseatingly dull in décor as every other hospital room Sherlock had ever been in, but even after six hours and forty-seven minutes in it, he had little idea what the exact shade of insipid grey-green paint on the walls was. The chair by John's bed was exactly as uncomfortable as it had looked, but Sherlock still seemed to be glued to it, frozen in place despite the twin facts that there was nothing he could do here to aid John's recovery and that Moriarty was disappearing further into his web of underworld alliances with every second he wasted in getting after him.

 _This must be what it feels like to care about someone,_ Sherlock thought in the distant echoing part of his brain that wasn't taken up with studying every tiny detail of John's slack, pale face, of the strained edge to his laboured breathing, the tension in the medical staffs' jaws that said they weren't confident enough about his chances of survival to be able to relax.

 _He will survive,_ he thought fiercely, automatically rejecting the idea that there could be any other outcome. _He'll wake up and get better._

There was a slightly longer pause between the beeps of John's heart monitor, only a split-second, but it made something icy-cold seized a tight grip on Sherlock's lungs for the tiny fraction of time before it resumed its steady beat. _Good god,_ he thought despairingly. _And John thought that it would be a good thing for me to feel like this._

No wonder normal people were so achingly stupid and blind to the world around them if they had to cope with this churning black pit of emotion all the time. For a brief moment Sherlock considered the idea that it would be better if John did die so that he'd never have to suffer through this again, but the idea caused such a horrifyingly uncontrollable reaction that he had to immediately abandon it.

Well, one thing was for certain – Sherlock was never letting this happen with anyone else. If he was doomed to have to feel this sickening wrench whenever John was hurt, then so be it. He couldn't stomach the idea of cutting John out of his life, abandoning what was the most comfortable living situation he had ever had and losing his only colleague and friend all at the same time, but he could make sure that he never suffered through this with anyone else.

It just wasn't worth it, especially as he found it hard to believe that anyone else would be able to match the benefits that he had found in his association with John. Who else would have the knack of sitting quietly in the same room as Sherlock, both of them pre-occupied with their own projects and largely ignoring each other, and yet somehow be able to affect Sherlock's mind to the point that he thought better and felt calmer in their presence? Who else would follow along behind Sherlock so tirelessly, saying the exactly right thing at the perfect time to spin Sherlock's brain off in search of the right connection? Who else would keep up with Sherlock whilst running through a collapsing building with a life-threatening wound?

No, it was clear. John was going to have to be the only person who had this power over Sherlock. Everyone else would just have to stay in the sea of faceless, mindless idiots that made up the rest of the human race. Sherlock didn't have time for them.

 

****

 

When John finally woke up, the first sound he made was a tiny, pained groan, let out before he'd even opened his eyes. Sherlock sat up from the slump he'd descended into and leant eagerly forward, and when John's eyes finally fluttered open, Sherlock was the first thing he focussed on.

“About time you woke up,” Sherlock told him, pushing down the surge of emotion that had welled up inside him. Surely it should start to die down again now that John was getting better, and Sherlock would be able to reclaim those parts of his mind that had been hijacked by it? He wasn't sure he'd be able to cope if it became a permanent fixture.

“Did you need me for something?” asked John in a slow, slurred voice.

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “I need you to be in good health.”

“Might have to wait a few weeks,” said John, blinking at Sherlock as if his ability to focus had still not fully returned to him. “Not sure I'm up for a rooftop chase right now.”

Sherlock let out a long breath he hadn't known he was holding in. “I can wait,” he allowed. “As long as you promise not to do this to me again.”

John let out a weak chuckle. “Almost sounds like you actually care,” he said, still sounding slightly loopy, and Sherlock noted that the amount of painkillers he was on probably meant that he only had half an idea what was going on.

“I do,” he gritted out.

There was a surprised pause and John reacted almost comically, round blue eyes staring at Sherlock in shock. Sherlock clenched his fists irritably, glaring at John with all the accusation he could muster while the majority of him was still seeped in the relief of seeing him awake.

“I hope you're proud,” he said bitterly.

The silence stretched for another long moment as John appeared to attempt to wrap his drug-fuddled mind around that. “Very,” he said eventually. “Now we just have to work on your knowledge of the solar system.”

“I think you've filled up my mind with quite enough useless junk,” said Sherlock sharply.

John let out a sleepy snort, his eyelids already beginning to droop again. “Good to hear that much hasn't changed,” he said as he relaxed back into unconsciousness. “You shouldn't change too much. I like you just as you are.”

He was out again before Sherlock could react to that. Sherlock stared at his face, a warm glow of something comforting and unexpected welling up in his stomach and calming the jittering terror that had held him hostage for so long. At least they were both in this thing together. Sherlock was rapidly learning that having John by his side was much the best way to deal with difficult and unexpected situations, and this definitely counted under that definition.

He let his hand rest for a moment over the top of John's, then resolutely stood up. Time to hunt down a master criminal and teach him why hurting John Watson was an unforgivable mistake.


End file.
